January '39
running from the fascists
he made it into France
just beyond the border
to the seaside town of Collioure

There his mother died
just days after they'd arrived
and he followed her
a month later

I knew nothing of this
the death of the man
the Spanish people honor
as their greatest twentieth century poet

I'd come with a friend
it was raining on the coast
and idling in a bookstore
I came across a little book
in Spanish and in French

I asked where he was buried
someone pointed up the street
just walked a few blocks
the graveyard was tiny
his grave near the entrance
the headstone had a quote
from a poem called retrato

and when it arrives
the day of my last journey
and the ship is debarking
never to return
you'll find me on board
with scarcely any baggage
nearly naked
like the children of the sea

This was lovely but
what I discovered next
touched and amazed me
and still brings me delight

At the headstone a mailbox
brimming over with letters
written only recently
addressed to the poet
who was still quite alive
in the minds of his readers
though on another plane
of existence

I tried to imagine
my fellow Americans
writing letters
to Walt Whitman who also
suffered civil war
not likely I thought
maybe you have to live
through decades of fascist rule
to apprreciate the gift